


I've Got A Woman Now

by risingtides



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cheating, Depression, M/M, Mentions of Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-04 11:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4135419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risingtides/pseuds/risingtides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all tastes the same, but boy there's something different about your mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for any mistakes, im terrible at proofreading. inspired by 'woman' by the 1975

Bare bodies pressed against one another, hands grabbing, mouths pulling, soft grunts and quiet moans.

 _None of this is Louis_ , Harry reminds himself. _It hasn't been for a while_.

He'll fall into the same routine again once they’re finished, Harry knows it, but pushes the thought to the side as he pushes into her, watching as her face distorts slightly before she finds comfort, finding his own rhythm to fall into it. They stay like that for a while, moving slowly before they both climax, Harry's arms wrapping around her waist as his back muscles clench, releasing. She’s so beautiful, sounds so gorgeous, but can’t help to think of Louis and the way his body squirmed under his own, strong arms pinning the older boy down and watching his childlike face grin from bliss. Harry is quickly reminded that things aren’t the same.

And he falls into the same routine.

He falls beside her with his back facing her, blank eyes staring at the wall. She knows how he gets after this but she's never sure why, he tells her not to worry, he needs to take his meds is all, he always forgets, 'silly me' he'll tell her. By this point they stop fighting about, she comes up behind him and holds him, her tan arms around his chest that remind him so much of Louis that he starts to cry. He cries and she comforts him and then they wake up and pretend it never happened because Harry doesn’t want to talk about it. She understands that now and doesn’t question it even when he knows it worries her. They go about their daily lives, smiling and laughing, going to work, loving each other like he should be loving Louis but he isn't and he hasn't for a while now.

Harry often wonders about how Louis is doing. He imagines him leading a happy life without him, before he broke his heart because he couldn’t learn to handle the demons in his head and deal with the reality and the sacrifices of loving someone as beautiful as Louis. Louis deserved more than Harry could give him and it sounded so selfish and self-centered but Louis was the glimmering sea that Harry was too afraid to go in for fear of drowning.

So instead he tries to forget by putting all of his energy into her, into loving her because she’s so beautiful and deserving of it and Harry is in a better place now but when he’s lying awake at 3 in the morning he can almost hear the way Louis sobbed as he packed his things and left their shared apartment, Harry’s vision clouded with his own tears as he said “I’m sorry, I’m not strong enough.” And Louis begged him to stay, “We can get through this, Haz, please, not now, I love you, don't go, you're enough, you always have been.” But it wasn’t enough for Harry to stay, his mind couldn't be changed.

He doesn’t think he can ever forgive himself for hurting him like that.

Harry remembers how he almost killed himself that night. He’d sat on the edge of the bridge for what felt like years, tears in his eyes and the demons in his head screaming at him for hurting such a pure soul, for being unable to cope with the cards he had been dealt. A foreign strength in him pulled him away from the ledge by dawn, and he went home to his mother’s house like the previous night had never happened, although she knew that something had happened between them.

He met the girl a few months later during a guy’s night out with his friend Liam, trying to get his mind off Louis. What was meant to be a one night stand turned into something more until they were moving in together and Liam noticed that Harry was the happiest he had been in months. For a while, Harry really was happy. He felt like he had finally moved on, finally able to give himself wholly to someone else who he cared about.

He saw Louis at the store one day with a new boyfriend – Liam tells him that they work together, goes by Zayn – and the feelings he thought had been pushed away crashed down on him. The meds return to his bedside table and Harry has to try to explain his depression to his new girlfriend, that he’s having trouble with it again (that is not a result of seeing Louis happy without him) and the fitful nights of crying himself to sleep commence. Harry isn't sure if he expected Louis to stay stuck on him, only knowing that he isn't prepared for the feeling of Louis being okay without him although he knows the only thing Harry could do is corrupt his happiness. Still, he cries.

Tonight is no different.

 

____________

 

Harry wakes up a few hours before she gets up for work and heads to the bathroom, wiping the sleep from his eyes and dried tears from his cheeks. Flipping the bathroom light on, he sees his eyes are bloodshot and his nose and cheeks are flushed from crying.

“Fucking pathetic.” Harry mumbles as he splashes water on his face, drying off with a hand towel. He stares at himself long and hard in the mirror, mind racing through images of her and him and Louis and soon the memories are getting jumbled up and Harry is crying again and he’s gripping the edge of the sink so hard he’s afraid he’ll break the porcelain which will be the third thing he’s broken this month due to his breakdowns and this will be the last straw for her and she’ll leave and –

His mind goes quiet when he looks at himself in the mirror again. The only thing on his mind is Louis.

None of this is how it is supposed to be. Harry loves her but he shouldn’t be here. He should be with Louis. He _needs_ to be with Louis.

But Harry turns his back to look at her sleeping from their bed – she’s never done a bad thing to him, just like Louis.

He always compares him to Louis.

“I’ve got a woman now.” He murmurs.

Running his hands over his face once more, calming down, he leaves the bathroom and crawls back into bed with her, this time taking her into his arms.

For a moment, he forgets about Louis. But he’ll always fall into the same routine.


	2. Chapter 2

Louis's life was turned upside down the night Harry walked out.

Harry leaving him shouldn’t have caught him so off-guard, he shouldn’t have gotten so upset, shouldn’t have gotten so attached to a man struggling with his own darkness that he was unable to give himself to Louis. He understood that, and he knew he could never have all of Harry as much as he tried and as much as he wished that Harry could beat it but he always seemed to doubt himself. Once Harry was convinced that he would only bring down Louis there was no turning him around, as much as he pleaded.

Louis could never forget the night Harry walked out with bags in hand, ignoring his pleads to stay. He hasn’t seen him, hasn’t contacted him since that night more than two years ago because it doesn’t do well to dwell on the things that hurt. Despite how much he didn’t want to, he had to move on, had to find away to rid himself of the pain.

He sought this in one Zayn Malik.

Niall had introduced him, said he was a close family friend, and they had gotten together for some drinks. The two really hit it off and for the night Louis forgot about the hurt Harry placed inside his lonely little heart because, even if for the moment, Zayn was filling it with his chocolate brown eyes and hearty laugh that made Louis gleam on his own. He hadn’t felt so good in so long.

It wasn’t too long after that the two began to date and Louis had never felt better. Every day was a new adventure and – he would never admit it – not having to deal with random bouts of sadness from Zayn made their time together that much more enjoyable. Little by little, he was waning off the fond memories of Harry and focusing on Zayn, who brought the sunshine back into his life.

He found routine in Zayn, forged from a new found happiness.

His happiest moments with Zayn were spent in bed, long fingers carefully gracing his sun-kissed skin that glowed whenever he was with him. Hazel eyes bore into his own blue ones before they fluttered shut, Louis arching into Zayn’s touch as he eased inside him.

They never had sex to try and hide pain, to forget about sadness, because Louis was his happiest since being with Harry. Their energy could be put into making something beautiful between them, beautiful love that filled every of inch of Louis like Harry had never filled him. There was nothing missing with Zayn, he gave Louis everything he needed.

Yet storm clouds would soon role their way in and the abyss in Louis’s hard would return.

 

____________

 

Louis can’t remember when the change occurred in Zayn, although he thinks it was the one day they stopped at the grocery store to pick up things for a special dinner Louis had planned on making for their two year anniversary. He remembers having to shake Zayn out of a daze, looking like he was staring at some bloke from across the store. He insisted it was nothing, rushing them out of the store after buying their things.

It was the first time Zayn had hit him.

He was carrying two plates to the table for them to eat on, the rest of the food awaiting him at the table. Wearing only socks on the hardwood floor, he slipped and dropped one of the plates to grab a hold of the counter to avoid falling. Accordingly so the plate shattered into pieces.

Louis laughs it off, a bit pissed about losing a piece of dining, but Zayn doesn’t seem to be so at ease.

“What in the hell are you doing, Lou?” he snaps, clearly annoyed. Louis was confused; he’s never seen Zayn react like this, which causes him to raise an eyebrow.

“I just slipped, no big deal.” he murmurs, making a hushed comment about how “Someone must be grumpy today.”

Clearly not speaking softly enough, this is enough to force Zayn to get up and smack Louis across the face, stunning him.

“What the fuck, Z, who do yo-"

“Just clean it up! For Christ’s sake, you’ve gone and ruined our dinner now. I’ve lost my appetite, just get away from me.” Zayn cuts him off, storming away to their bedroom and throwing the door shut.

Louis is stunned, unable to process what had just happened. Zayn had never yelled at him like that, let alone lay a hand on him.

“Oh my god.” He gasps before he sinks down to the floor and starts to cry, cradling his face in his hands. He had never seen Zayn so angry at him and had especially never been hit by him. After a few minutes of this he wipes his eyes and proceeds to clean up the smashed plate, deciding to eat a bit before heading to their room where Zayn remained locked up.

His back faced him, bent over with his head in his hands. Zayn didn’t hear him enter, continuing to sit like that before lifting his head and staring at his hands as if he couldn’t believe what he had just done.

“Z?”

Zayn turns around quickly, eyes wet with tears and a sorry expression, almost causing Louis to forget about what had just happened.

“Lou, baby, I-I don’t know what came over me, I’m sorry, that won’t ever happen again, you know how much I love you, I love you.” Zayn says, standing up and meeting Louis in the middle of their bedroom to press a kiss to his forehead, running his thumb over where he had smacked him. “Poor baby, I’m so sorry.”

Louis smiles at him, giggling as he does this, instantly forgiving him because he was so in love with Zayn and he trusted the notion that another incident like this would never occur again.

He was right for a while, it didn’t. Their relationship went back to normal and it was as if the night never happened, Louis doing his best to push it to the back of his mind because he could never imagine Zayn acting like that towards him. Something must have just ticked him off that day but he will never know; Zayn doesn’t like to talk about it. Louis would never admit to Zayn that he had never been more scared in his life than that day, to see his lover turned upside down over something so miniscule, but they decided to put it behind them in good faith.

 

____________

 

Louis remembers the magical nights making beautiful love, the nights spent in when rain ruined the possibility for going out, the adventures he had and the liveliness he felt with Zayn – all of these are distant memories.

Trapped by a loveless relationship that neither of them had the heart to break, Louis spent his days in the apartment and his nights tending to Zayn, tiptoeing around him and hoping not to bother him. More often than not they got into screaming matches, fighting with each other to the point of bruised skin and scratched arms.

Louis wouldn’t let Zayn have his way with him anymore, not like when this first started. He was stronger now, he wasn’t afraid of Zayn like he used to be, but he had to get out. Until then their fistfights would continue, their screaming matches waking up the neighbors, the lack of love evident but never addressed. He doesn’t know where they went wrong, they were so in love and it all went to shit.

Maybe Louis needs Harry more than he thinks he does, needs him more than just the occasional spotting in Tesco, met with quick glances and not a word spoken between them. He thinks that Zayn sees Harry too sometimes and thinks Louis is cheating on him, but despite how much he wants him now and how much he hates Zayn, he would never cheat.

Louis found routine in Zayn, now forged out of resentment.


End file.
